Prayer Studies

[Heywood]

You cannot guarantee God even considers the prayers genuine prayers and not artifacts of a scientific study.

Of course not, because for god to be considered a proper variable he must first be proven to exist. Without his existence to support the controlled variable, one can only study the effects belief in god and prayer have on particular outcomes.

Studies have shown that mind alteration geared toward the positive sometimes, that being the operative word, can improve an outcome. Of course, even the opposite can be stated as well. As a pessimist, I can state for certain that sometimes good things happen to me even though I was genuinely expecting the worst.

Outcomes, overall, cannot be controlled by thought, mind alteration, or god. Outcomes occur the way they do for the simple reason that was the way they were supposed to occur. Outcomes are nothing more than coincidences, no matter how much meaning we would prefer to attribute to them.

I don't believe this is true. If what you claim is true, you wouldn't need people to actually pray to be an element of the study. Instead you would simply tell(lie to) one group that they were receiving prayers. The other group you tell prayers are not being offered for them.

Prayer studies make the assumption that God exists and then proceed to test if God answers prayers. That is why they go to lengths to recruit prayers to actually pray.